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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Category: Opinion

Kadamose (G-Man calls for censoring offensive posts)

from the (Sigh) dept.
G-Man writes: "To whom it concerns,

this is a complaint about one your nanodot.org users, his userID is Kadamose. I only wish to bring to your attention some rather questionable comments, one's such as,

"Couldn't have said it better myself. Personally, I don't give a shit about the Sept.11 attacks, mainly because I know that we all deserved it – and hell, we were warned a month ahead of time but nothing was taken seriously, and thus, the arrogant fools are paying for it. I'm actually surprised we weren' attacked years ago…most Americans are ignorant dickheads (especially our braindead politicians) and the world would definitely be alot better off without them." [Editor's note: for the sake of context, the comments appeared here.]

I find and, I'm sure, most people will find comments like this to be offensive, not due to his language but more of what has happened to the US in the past couple of months. I for one had lived in New York and don't appreciate what he has to say.

Is there anyway we can have him removed from this forum?

Thanks for your time."

Nanotech graduate schools?

brarrr writes "I'm a Materials Engineering student and have been interested in everything nanotech for about 4 years, reading about it in my own time and tailoring my coursework in such a manner to prepare me to work and research in the field. I am applying to graduate schools with the intention of studying something nanotech (NEMS, fabrication, materials, biotech), and am looking for any recommendations on schools or any up-and-coming programs that are not publicized yet. I am currently looking at Cornell, RPI, U Washington, JHU, and Northwestern."

Disparate paces of law and technology

DavidForrest writes "Thanks to Kris Holley for finding this article on human cloning and the desire by some to regulate it:
http://cnn.technology.emailthis.clickability.com/e t/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=490262681 From my perspective, this continues to demonstrate how technological advances lead regulatory control. (I'm not necessarily advocating regulatory control for human cloning.) But in the case of nanotechnology I have proposed a regulatory framework (https://foresight.org/NanoRev/ Forrest1989.html). It seems likely that nothing like this will be implemented prior to the development of molecular assembler systems. In the absence of that, all we have now are the IMM and Foresight Guidelines (http://www.imm.org/guidelines/current.html) and whatever inadequate laws can be adopted to molecular assembler systems (discussed in my 1989 paper).
– David Forrest"

Digital Consumers Unions

PatGratton writes "Keeping in mind that digital technology has strong direct and indirect effects on the development of nanotechnology and other transformational technologies… How do we get what we want from the digital industry in regards to: openness, privacy, security, robustness, rapid development, intellectual property distribution, etc.?

To answer this question, I'm writing a book called "Digital Needs" which examines the next 10 years of consumer facing digital technology – from the consumer's point of view. It lays out consumer requirements for hardware convergence, digital publishing, privacy, etc. and then suggests how they might be implemented.

For example, for digital publishing, I require that: Once a consumer has bought a digital good (book, music etc.) from a publisher, he should be guaranteed that he'll be able to access that good for the rest of his life, regardless of: loss of original copy, damage to or destruction of viewing hardware, changes in technology (e.g., html replaced by xml replace by ???), or even demise of the company that sold him the good. I then describe a system that makes this guarantee possible.

To help enforce these requirements, I suggest that commercially motivated Digital Consumers Unions be formed – some focussing on the needs of private consumers, others focussing on the needs of corporate consumers.

That's the brief introduction. For more information, see the Digital Needs Homepage.

Read more for more detailed links.

A skeptical view of nanotechnology

from the reacting-to-nanohype dept.
For a skeptical view of the potential benefits of nanotechnology, try this editorial ("Itty bitty miracles", by Jared Kendall, 12 September 2001) from The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana: "Every decade or so, a new scientific field is hailed as the answer to all our problems. Usually, such claims turn out to be slightly exaggerated. Such is surely to be the case with nanotechnology, a large field of study being built around the really, really small. That isn't to say that nanotechnology won't change our lives. Heck, it already has. It's just that nanotech won't solve all our problems. Technology is never as powerful as its potential."

Issues raised by Bill Joy still being debated

from the reverberations dept.
Pondering the question of whether one can have too much Joy, a set of commentaries on the issues raised by Bill Joy in his (in)famous article in Wired Magazine (April 2000) have been posted on the KurzweilAI website.

(Oh, very well — Joy's original article is still available on the web. Some of the earlier reactions to Joyís arguments were covered in the "Media Watch" column in Foresight Update 41, 42, and 43.)

Nanotech is planet

from the mean,-green-technology dept.
A strongly-worded editorial by science and science-fiction writer Spider Robinson ("We can rewrite Genesis", 7 August 2001) on the potential for advanced nanotechnology to provide a high standard of living while reducing and even reversing human damage to the global ecosystem appeared in the Toronto, Canada Globe and Mail. Not surprisingly (if you are familiar with Robinson), the piece reads as if it might have been written by Robert A. Heinlein:
"The human race must pursue that glorious vision — if necessary, die trying. We dare not throttle back the machine at this point. It's a cranky old machine, jerry-built, run by committee, and very low on fuel. If we permit it to so much as stall, we'll never get it running again: there just aren't enough metals and fossil fuels left in the ground to start over.
"All we can do is pray it will run on fumes long enough to get us to nanotech, the Ultimate Gas Station."

Reason correspondent rages against "neo-Luddite movement"

from the meme-wars dept.
A lengthy commentary by Reason Magazine science correspondent Ronald Bailey ("Rage Against the Machines: Witnessing the birth of the neo-Luddite movement", July 2001) recapitulates his passionately-expressed concerns over what he has called a "global anti-technology movement". Previous diatribes more specifically focused on nanotechnology appeared in February and July of 2001. In this latest piece Bailey concludes: "The hopeful future of humanity freed from disease, disability, hunger, ignorance, poverty, and inequity depends on beating back the forces of neo-Luddite reaction . . . The struggle for that future begins now."

LA Times columnist favors uploading

from the chips,-ahoy! dept.
In a commentary in the Los Angeles Times spurred by the release of the film A.I., Bart Kosko, a professor of the electrical engineering at USC and author of Heaven in a Chip (Random House, 2000), places himself in the intellectual camp that sees a merger of humans and their technology as inevitable.

"It will be far easier to make us more like computers than to make computers more like us," says Kosko. He concludes: "So forget "A.I.'s" vision of lumbering machines that simply mimic our pre-computer notions of speech and movement and emotions. Brains and robots and even biology are not destiny. Chips are."

RF powered Nanotech

from the on-the-right-wavelength? dept.
Edd writes "I was just wondering if anybody else thought it possible to power nanoscale electronic devices with the ambient RF [radio frequency] signals that are present in our everyday lives. I want to know what are some of the limitations of such a thing (other than it is a really small amount of power). The angle I am coming from is from electromagnetic induction in its simplest form, the idea being that you have electronics that have no onboard power supply, but draw all their electric power needs from RF or other electromagnetic waves that are present in the environment. It would be neat to have a wireless power supply, no?"

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